Brothers in the World of Light
by The Loud Guy
Summary: Ness and Lucas were not present when the heroes were wiped out; the end only found them a little later. A story that explores how Lucas and Ness might relate to each other in the wake of their own adventures, in the wake of Subspace Emissary, and how they experience the beginning of World of Light.


Ness and Lucas were not present at the end of the world. When a terror unleashed an apocalypse of light, and heroes were blotted out, fighting or fleeing, and only through concerted effort did even one manage to escape, the boy from Onett and the boy from Tazmily were half a planet away. No one had called on them; they were children. No one wanted to involve them if it could be helped.

Perhaps it would not have made a difference. Perhaps it would have. There's no way to know. They were not there.

They were sitting on a hill overlooking Onett, just outside of town, so that the woods spread out beneath them and the town spread beyond that. They could see civilization, count the cars that traced their lines up and down the streets, but nature stood as a buffer between them and the noise of the world. Lucas liked it better that way; Ness did too, though he didn't say it as often. The sun was high and the breeze was cool and it was a perfect day to sit on the edge of a cliff with your feet hanging off and watch the world go by.

Ness unslung his backpack, set it on his lap, unzipped it, and drew out two objects carefully wrapped in wax paper. One he handed to Lucas; the other he kept for himself, unwrapping it with a deliberate slowness that Lucas knew he used to mask eagerness. Lucas unwrapped his quickly, and the smell of freshly-charred beef filled the air around them before being carried away on the breeze. The bread was fresh, too, and the onions had been picked up that morning at Onett's farmer's market. Lucas loved onions; when he bit down there was an explosion of juice and aromatic flavor that you couldn't really get with any other topping. Underneath the crisp onions, smoky cheese oozed into the cracks in the meat.

He chewed and swallowed, not wanting to talk around his food, before saying, "Your mom makes the best burgers."

"Mm." Ness looked up from his own burger, thick with lettuce and tomato and spicy mustard, before swallowing. "She says everything's better fresh. Doesn't really trust store-bought burgers, even from the market."

Lucas nodded; there wasn't much to say to that. He could tell from the way the burger tasted; there was a particular balance in the salt, he thought, in the buns and in the meat, that said she probably expected the two of them to be out running around a lot. The patties were thicker than fast food burgers, charred on the outside and cooked through but still running with juice and grease when he bit down. There wasn't a single element of it that felt like it had been crafted with anything less than years of practice and absolute care; even the thickness of his onions was just the way he liked it, and she'd only known him for a little while, really.

There was a… _warmth_ to it all. Warmth was the right word.

He reached up with his free hand and wiped his eyes with his palm.

"You OK?"

"Yeah. Just. It's really nice, you know? It's a lot of onions." He sniffed. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry." Ness took another bite, which Lucas took as a cue to do the same thing. They ate in silence for a little while, getting about halfway through their massive burgers, when Ness continued: "Do you want to talk about it?"

"If we talk about it I'll end up crying."

"That's OK. The only thing that matters is if you want to talk about it. You know that." Not an admonishment; Lucas _did_ know that, and both of them knew he knew it. He didn't even really have to talk about it; the two of them could communicate plenty clearly without talking, but… talking helped. Talking _out loud_ to Ness helped. He didn't understand, exactly, but he could empathize more directly than Kumatora and Duster, or even Paula and Jeff.

Lucas nodded, taking another bite of his burger to let Ness know he could go first.

"Does it make you think of home?"

 _Home_ was the heaviest word in the universe; family, and the past, and the song of birds. Him and Claus dancing around in the kitchen while their mom sang and clapped her hands and their dad sat in the corner, nodding his head and tapping his foot. He was crying already, or at least he was about to be. Well, fine. It was good to cry, sometimes.

"Yeah. It, uh. It reminds me… my mom used to bake fresh bread for us all the time, and sometimes she'd make us her 'special bread.' She'd always put a little butter on the dough after it was done rising, but for her special bread she'd add a little sugar and cinnamon when it was almost done baking. Not a lot. Just some. Enough that you could taste it. It was." He had to stop for a minute and was thankful for Ness's patient silence just like he'd been thankful a hundred times in the past. "It was my favorite food. Mom's special bread. I liked having it straight out of pan. Mom would always put a little bit of extra sugar on my piece, and a little bit of extra salt on Claus's. He always liked salty foods. Dad said he didn't like it, but when he thought we weren't looking, he and Mom would share a piece. And. And, uh." And his father and mother would stand next to the stove and talk in low, husky whispers to each other about things Lucas and Claus never got to hear and when they did that their father would smile, smile like there was nothing else in the whole world that mattered but what was there in the house. And their mother would smile, too, and the house was so _warm_ , and.

He didn't realize he had started really crying until Ness put an arm around his shoulders and he leaned into the embrace.

After a long time—not as long as last time, which had not been as long as the time before—Lucas sat back up and the two of them went back to eating.

Ness finished his burger, balled up the wax paper, put it back into his backpack, and wiped his fingers on the grass. Neither of them said anything while Lucas finished; whenever they hung out they talked a lot about games, and movies, and comic books, but more important than those things were the silences. The silence could stretch on and on, and there was never any pressure to talk if either of them didn't feel like it. Lucas knew what the feeling was like, but he'd never pronounced it to himself, almost didn't want to; it would be disrespecting Claus, wouldn't it? No. Probably not. But it felt like it, in the very pit of his heart where reason held no sway, and that was enough to corral his thoughts. Still, the implication was there, made sharper by his unwillingness to put it into words.

"Do you want to try making it?"

"Huh?" Lucas looked over at Ness, who was looking down at Onett, idly kicking his legs in the empty air.

"Your mom's special bread. Well, not hers. But we could make _your_ special bread. My mom could teach us how to bake it, and we could figure out the right timing and ingredients on our own, right? It might take a few tries to get it down, and it wouldn't be the same, but," and here he looked at Lucas and grinned so wide it was like he'd never seen any of the things that Lucas knew he'd had to fight to get to where he was, as if the weight of the world was nothing to him, "it'd be like having a little bit of home, right? It could be a happy thing. And I'll help."

Lucas turned back to Onett, wiped at his eyes again. Finished his burger, handed the wrapping back to Ness.

"Yeah. That sounds really good." Because it did.

The sun was shining, and the breeze was cool, and they were full of good food. Maybe now they'd walk into town, maybe go to the arcade.

When the end of the world came, the earth did not shake; the sky did not darken; the mountains did not crumble. On the other side of the planet there was a terrible light, a shockwave of force and power that would blot out everything. They felt it as a ripple across the consciousness of the very world, and both got to their feet simultaneously.

Ness turned away from Onett; for whatever reason, he felt more sharply the direction that the end was screaming from.

"Hold on," he said to Lucas, and ran to the other side of the hilltop, around the long-cooled meteorite. Lucas didn't argue, or follow him, or call out.

So: they were both looking to the horizon when it began to glow, to _heave_. They were both aware, simultaneously, of the magnitude of the power leveled against them: one thought of Giygas, and the other a dragon. Powers so vast that they could not be contended with; this was like those.

Then tendrils of light rose from the horizon, swirling through the air, so radiant it burned, roaring with the voices of a hundred endings.

Then, from the other side of the hill, Ness called out. Ness who was afraid of nothing, Ness who had looked into the eye of the apocalypse and stood unblinking, Ness who had invited Lucas home and called him family and been a pillar of strength:

"Lucas! _Run!_ "

For one second he was small again and looking up at the face of a friend who had become a monster that would take his mother away and his fear was like ice in his legs, locking his knees and holding him still. Then Ness screamed again, a sound of raw panic that Lucas had never imagined he could make:

" ** _RUUUUUUN_** "

And he ran.

He did not run down the hill, taking the winding path; he jumped directly down the steep slope of the cliff, barely able to balance himself, held up only by his psychic powers and the raw animal panic of his body. His feet threatened to slip out from under him at every step but his strength and his fear made them obey and he ran down the side of the hill and he did not look back.

 _Come on, it's OK to cry. You don't have to be ashamed. OK?_

He flew down the hill and tripped at the end and rolled and came up running and he was bleeding from his knees and his shoulders but he didn't feel it. He could hear the light behind him, now, the way it hissed and roared and ate at the world around it, erasing everything it touched.

 _My granddad says I cry too much._

 _Your granddad sounds like a dink_.

The birds were not singing; either from their own instinct or because they felt the upwelling of panic from the two boys atop the hill they had taken flight, filling the sky over Lucas's head with beating wings and frantic calls. He ran down the road, past a house that had stood empty for years and under which a tunnel lead to where a nightmare used to sleep.

 _I couldn't help you before._

 _With the statue? You were scared! It's OK to be scared! I was scared too!_

He kept running straight, cutting across widths of grass and flying down steep slopes with the same reckless speed, seeking only to get away. But running was impossible, wasn't it? Surely it was. He could feel the power unleashed so intimately that he knew how pointless it was to flee; something like that was bigger than the whole world. There could be no escape. So why was he running?

 _Listen. You and me, we're going to stick together._

He looked over his shoulder, and he did not see Ness following him. He wondered where the other boy was for just a second before the tendrils of light smashed through the hilltop as if it didn't exist, sending boulders as big as houses and gouts of earth spewing into the air like cannonballs fired by giants.

 _You want to—hang out? With me?_

 _Of course! We've seen a lot of the same things, right? It makes sense that we'd be friends._

The earth shook under him, and his feet were pulled away. He fell, hard, his diaphragm slamming squarely into the ground, and he could not breathe. The sound behind him was louder, so loud it was filling up everything, and when there was an impact right next to him he squeezed his eyes shut and covered his head with his hands.

 _You can meet my mom, and my sister, and my dog. They'll all love you!_

"PK…"

He looked up, and Ness was between him and the light.

" **ROCKIN!** "

 _It'll be like we're brothers._

Ness's power burned red and blue and green and yellow, a storm of colors and energies that traced fractal patterns in the air as it roared outward. A single beam of light twisted off from the pack, and now its low roar had become an all-consuming howl as it streaked toward the two of them. Ness's eyes were alight as he threw his power at it.

 _I'm sorry._

 _Don't be sorry for crying. Cry if you need to. Be scared if you need to!_

The light of the end and the shape of Ness's power met each other in the air. That light had broken gods, leveled mountains, eradicated some of the greatest warriors the world had ever known as simply as wiping a chalkboard clean; but for a moment, just for a _moment_ , it was held in check. Molten fractals spun out through the air as Ness's power reasserted itself against the destructive, eradicating force of the light, and Lucas could feel it as Ness's strength was channeled through the world itself, multiplied by it, sent back against the end over and over again.

Another stream of light joined the first, and Ness staggered.

 _If you're scared, then I'll help. And you do the same thing for me._

Lucas got up. He ran to Ness, taking his place next to him.

"PK… **LOVE!** "

For he had touched the heart of the world, too; he had brushed against the mind of the primordial, had grown from it. His power roared out in pinks and yellows and reds and greens, the fractals so different from Ness's that when they overlapped it hurt the eye to look at, as if they were twisting the very fabric of the world around them. And they were. The light smashed into their power, and their power held. Then there was more light, and more, and more, rushing down to crush two souls who wielded strength that would shake the world.

 _We'll take care of each other._

The light was more than the world. They knew it; they defied it anyway. Their powers joined were not enough, the light pressed in against and through the strength of their minds, and as the world grew brighter Ness grabbed Lucas's hand.

 _That's what brothers do, right?_

They were not afraid, when the light took them.


End file.
